Throughout the day, a person goes through numerous stress causing environments. Most of these environments are not overly stressful. They may cause anger or worry, but nothing over the top. The real dangers are the stressors that you face daily that cause you major anger or worry. Going through this too much will eventually cause you physical sickness, but how?
All that stress on your body causes distress, a negative stress reaction. Distress can disturb the body’s internal balance, or equilibrium. And this is what causes you to become physically sick, and this sickness can have damaging effects. Physical sicknesses such as high blood pressure, upset stomach, headaches/migraines, sleep problems, and chest pain can all be caused by stress. Stress is even linked to deaths caused by lung ailments, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide. (Stress).
It’s always sad to hear about teenagers taking their own lives and leaving notes that read about how they just couldn’t deal with the stress anymore. Or to hear about people who turn to sex, drugs, and or alcohol just to release their stressor’s stranglehold on their lives. Everyone needs a release, but it is not acceptable when that release turns to even worse outlets.
Keeping proper perspective is the most important think when it comes to dealing with stress. If we lose focus on God and his love for us we become surrounded by the let downs of the world. Frank Peretti writes it like this in his book, “The Wounded Spirit.” He writes, “We all have our ‘difficult seasons.’ Some of us are in the middle of one right now. We don’t like them, of course, but they do have a way of finding their place in the overall scheme of our lives, welcome or not. There will be pain, and years afterward, there will still be questions. The sweet part of this is, as long as the Lord God is guiding your life, more years and more wisdom will bring a better perspective of what those tough were all about. So trust God. He’ll make things clear eventually. (187)”
Frank points out that we need to focus on God. Stressors like a rip in the family, a death, a robbery, and a broken relationship can lead a person down dark and crooked roads, but if we focus on God he’ll lead us down the straight and narrow and be the light on our path. We also need to realize that God does not want us to through trouble alone. He puts people in our lives that we can turn to and ask for help.
Peretti also writes, “Comforting others puts our pain into perspective. (186)”
Sometimes we may feel like what we are going through is unconquerable. We are in a fifty foot deep whole with no ladder. Then we may learn of someone else’s struggles and pains. Theirs may make your problems look like nothing more than a pimple. Instantly you can go from “woe is me” to “thank you for all the blessings you have given me,” and then God will help you help that person.
Let me give you one personal story to show you what stress can to a person physically. I have always been a bigger kid growing up, and it seemed I found my niche playing football. That was my calling. When I was 9 years old, my school district’s high school football coach told me he couldn’t wait to have me play high school football. I loved playing in the football games, but I dreaded practice. But every year I decided to quit football, I wanted back in, until high school. A knee injury in 8th grade kept me from playing that whole season, but I did make it back by the end of it. But being bigger and having knee problems is an unsolvable equation.
When I finally started playing high school football in 10th grade, my knees were to the point where I needed constant icing and medication for them. They hurt 24/7. This kept from living up to my high school coach’s expectations for me and angered him. Side comments made by him led to verbal arguments and even a physical altercation in which I ended up be whipped around by my helmet and spat in the face.
I started missing school a lot. I had horrible stomach cramping and vomited daily. The school nurse, who was a Christian, had recognized my signs of stress and started quizzing me on the cause of it. When I told her it was football and my coaches, the logical thing to do was quit football. And I did. Not because I’m a quitter though, but because the stressor in my life was leading me to worse and worse physical conditions and it had to be stopped. I’m not going to lie to you. Before I quit football, thoughts of suicide were in my head. I spent 3 hours one night lying on my bed with a hunting knife, constantly putting it to my throat. I prayed for 3 solid hours that night and handed my situation over to God. He wasn’t done with me yet.
But this illustrates how easy it is for stress to lead you down terrible roads. But once I put God into focus, everything became clear. There is a Johnny Nash song from 1972 that sums of this feeling. The first verse of “I can see clearly now” read like this, “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright), Sun-Shiny day.” (Nash).
Works Cited
Peretti, Frank. The Wounded Spirit. Tennessee: Word Publishing, 2000.
Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: How They Affect Your Health. Ed. Amal Chakraburtty, MD. 2007. Web MD. November 7, 2007. <http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/stress-anxiety-depression>.
Nash, Johnny. “I Can See Clearly Now.” 1972
